As a writer about the afterlife, I commonly hear people despairing about their lack of spiritual experiences, and how their guides seem to have blocked them off the cosmic Facebook page—they’re just nowhere to be found. In fact, when someone has had no ‘para’ experiences they may find themselves frustrated by the accounts of people who do.

Recently, a friend on Facebook revealed her crippling phobia of ghosts. Being the prankster I am, I told her to relax and sent a video to cheer her up—security footage of a poltergeist at a high school in Cork, Ireland. The footage hasn’t been verified as real, so I won’t be submitting it to the skeptics as final proof of ghosts; however, the school’s administration contends it’s legitimate.

Few experiences are as transformative as a beyond-the-shadow-of-a-doubt contact with a parallel dimension (otherwise known as “the other side” or the “afterlife”). Those people who appear to have gone mad and embraced ideas you’d never comprehend about life after death usually arrived at such a point after an unprecedented encounter with the beyond.